The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) was only first explored extensively in 1947 and 1948 by a team from Columbia University led by Bruce Heezen in a research vessel named Atlantis. Many commentators have claimed that there is no possibility of a ‘continent’ having been submerged in the Atlantic. However, leaving aside the question of whether Plato actually referred to Atlantis as a continent, the most cursory study of a bathymetric chart of the region shows a number of extensive areas that would have been dry land prior to the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. One of the most obvious is the Azores whose location opposite the most favoured location for the Pillars of Heracles has been seized upon as evidence for considering it as a possible site of Atlantis.

A number of writers, such a R. Cedric Leonard, have opted for a Mid-Atlantic Ridge location for Atlantis. Charles Hapgood opted for the Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul on the MAR, about 1000 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco in Venezuela, as the site of Plato’s famous island.